I know you need your sleep now,I
know your life's been hard.But many men are falling,where you promised
to stand guard.~~Leonard Cohen

My friend Bernie says
he's suffering from Afghanistan information exhaustion. "During all those months
that Obama was dragging his feet about escalating the war in Afghanistan, did
you ever get the impression," he asked, "that foxes were in the hen house,
chickens were squawking and running around crazily, wolves were tearing the
foxes to pieces, and farmers were shooting wildly into the coop with no regard
for the innocent?"

I stared at him, mouth agape, my mind trying to shore
up all that activity. "Well ... I --"

"And that's just the generals --
David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal -- and their boss, or cohort, defense
secretary Robert Gates. They were everywhere -- everywhere!" Bernie said,
rolling his eyes. "And still are. Turn on the TV, pick up a newspaper, open a
magazine, check out Congress, look under a rock -- peek behind a tree -- and
there they are. They're a three-man brigade -- "we're going in, we're coming out
-- we're winning, we're losing. Or maybe not. We won't know for 15 years...20
years...or until it's over --"

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Bernie shook his head in disgust, and
headed for the door. "You keep telling me to walk a mile in Obama's shoes; that
he's got a lot on his plate. Well," Bernie said grimly, "every time I try to do
that, I nearly drown. And, if you're paying attention, you know he's having
trouble keeping his own balance out there on those turbulent partisan political
seas."

President...who?

Bernie says he'd like to
give President Obama credit, or blame him, for the decision to expand the war in
Afghanistan, but is convinced that Obama's input was neither wanted nor accepted
by the three top war dogs. I agree. What those of us familiar with military
protocol -- with a properly functioning chain of command -- witnessed was a
crude, but effective, military coup.

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Aided by an eager and complicit
media, for months these insubordinates fueled the fire of Obama's inability to
come to a quick decision to meet their demands. They brushed him aside as
idealistic and inexperienced. Commander-in-Chief? C'mon, get real. During the
recent health-care fiasco, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) put
into words what all Republicans, not a few Democrats, and far too many
military brass think of Obama...

"...I believe he didn't serve in government long enough to
understand really how things work...Remember, he was in the Senate four years,
but effectively only two years because he spent two years where he was hardly
ever here at all -- he was campaigning for president. He really does not have an
understanding of how Congress operates."

The hateful audacity of
Chuck "Obama wants to kill your grandma" Grassley is the typical Republican
mindset concerning this president. Each time Republicans push him or challenge
him, rather than push back or kick ass, Obama backs down, preferring to
compromise to reach a bipartisan agreement. Unfortunately, Republicans don't
work that way. They want it all, and the only way they know to get it is to --
as Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol said -- "go for the kill."

The
military also goes for the kill. But that is its mission -- what it is trained
to do. And Obama needs to understand the military does not function on
compromises or bipartisanship. It has a chain of command, and when the
Commander-in-Chief, after considering input from field commanders, makes his
decision -- gives an order -- all those throughout that chain of command,
whether they agree or not, salute and continue to march.

That is not
happening here. After ten "war council" meetings and months of considering
input, an angry Obama rejected McChrystal's plan that had been leaked to Bob
Woodward at the Washington Post, and informed McChrystal that his goal
of doubling the force would not be met.

Two days later, on Dec 1, Obama
announced his decision from the US Military Academy at West Point. He
didn't mention smoking terrorists out, getting them on the run and bringing them
to justice, but he dredged up 9/11 and why we should remain convulsed in fear.
He spoke of "huge challenges," "bold action," "seizing the initiative," and
"long-term consequences." While we were trying to figure out if former president
George Bush had left a copy of his speech on the Academy podium, Obama announced
he was sending an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan but insisted since
America has no interest in fighting an endless war, 2011 was a definite time
frame. He said unequivocally that there
would be no counterinsurgency and, beginning in July of 2011, the troops would
begin to come home.

Or not. Nobody saluted. Gates, Petraeus and
McChrystal, along with Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Adm. Michael G. Mullen
continued to march in lockstep. They raced to the media both here and abroad,
where they shrugged aside Obama's promise of a July 2011 transition, saying it
was an "open issue." They insisted that counterinsurgency and special ops
remained "embedded" in their war strategy. Ten days after being rejected by
Obama, McChrystal's request to double the size of the Army and police to 400,000
remained unchanged.

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Foxes, Chickens and
Wolves

Obama should take a long, hard look at the Dick Cheney "stay
behinds" who are wreaking havoc, especially in defense; insubordinates who
openly challenge his decisions and defy his orders while whipping up confusion
with daily conflicting announcements and interviews. Perhaps he should start
with Cheney who not only stayed behind but remains in his Virginia bunker, just
a stone's throw from CIA headquarters, where he "goes for the kill" by giving
hate speeches and issuing press releases accusing Obama of being a coward that
are published verbatim
by the media.

Just hours after Obama's speech, the placid, eerily serene
Gates, along with Mullen and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, testified
before Congress that troop withdrawal depended on conditions on the ground
rather than a deadline. The consensus seemed to be that their commander-in-chief
was simply indulging in "wishful thinking."

Days later, according to Think
Progress, Gates, Petraeus, Clinton, and another Cheney "stay behind,"
National Security Adviser James Jones, were all over the Sunday talk shows.
Gates told CBS Meet the Press, "We will have a significant -- we will have
100,000 forces -- troops there. And they
are not leaving -- in July of 2011."